Celebration of Irish cooking tops Beard awards

A hefty tome that captures the spirit of Ireland won top honors at the James Beard Foundation annual book awards Sunday night in New York.

"The Country Cooking of Ireland" by Colman Andrews is a 384-page collection of recipes and tales of Irish culture.

Andrews, a food writer and author and the former editor-in-chief of Saveur magazine, had envisioned writing a much smaller book when he took the idea to Chronicle Books. But he was thrilled when his editors suggested something much grander, "and we ended up with this huge book with 250 recipes," he said.

Andrews found it hard to choose a favorite recipe but said that one of his personal revelations in writing the book came in the form of soda bread.

"I'm not a baker, and I've never been able to make bread," he said. "But when I started getting into the Irish soda bread, I realized that I could do this because soda bread is so easy. You don't have to knead it, and instead of yeast you use baking soda and buttermilk. You can do it at the beginning of a dinner party when people are having cocktails, and it will be ready an hour later, by the time people are sitting down. I love it, and so that's personally my favorite recipe."

Claudia Roden was inducted into the Cookbook Hall of Fame for her works on Middle Eastern cuisine, which started with "A Book of Middle Eastern Food" in 1968. At that time, Roden said, many people were shocked by her proposal to write about the food of the region, thinking it would "all be about sheep's testicles and eyeballs."

Here are the other winners:

American cooking: "Real Cajun," by Donald Link (Clarkson Potter)

Baking and dessert: "Baking," by James Peterson (Ten Speed Press)

Beverage: "Been Doon So Long," by Randall Grahm ( University of California Press)

Cooking from a professional point of view: "The Fundamental Techniques of Classic Pastry Arts," by The French Culinary Institute with Judith Choate (Stewart, Tabori & Chang)

General cooking: "Ad Hoc at Home," by Thomas Keller (Artisan)

Healthy focus: "Love Soup," by Anna Thomas (W.W. Norton)

International: "The Country Cooking of Ireland," by Colman Andrews (Chronicle Books)